there is a shot of Dr. Bill walking down the streets at night - I believe it's after he has visited his patients home who's father died.

it a centered persepective tracking shot - camera leading Dr. B as he walks. Now I could swear that it was a rear projection shot. But i always thought it to be ludacris to shoot a rear projection shot of a character walking down the street - it seems almost unneccesary and awkward to match the speed of stride with the background. especially when one has steadicams and a controlled street set, as Kubrick did...

however in the stanley kubrick archive there is a on set still photograph of this scene and it is indeed a rear projected image of a street as tom cruise walks in place on a treadmill in the studio.

Wow, that's too fucking cool. I guess it's to subliminally keep Cruise seperated from his environment, to perhaps make the environment seem real yet artificial? Damn, that's a great observation. You are talking about the shot where he's walking and the slaps his hands together in anger/frustration? The one in the trailers and such?

when freezing the high angle shot her in the morgue, I could swear that the corpse lying dead is Domino the prostitute

Quote from: Gamblor Posts Drunk

I definitely think the body in the morgue is Mandy, the orgy savior.

Quote from: cowboykurtis

i think Kubrick may have used the actress that played domino in that scene - as an attempt to confuse.

Both wrong, the body in the morgue is.........Laura Palmer!

Seriously, it's the actress that played Mandy, there's a set photo of SK, Cruise and her in that morgue, did a search and I can't find right now but I'm possitive she's the same, also IIRC Domino was way shorter than Mandy and Mandy had a model like body whereas Domino was more 'curvy', hope I made sense.

In Eyes Wide Shut, Abigail Good plays a "Mysterious Woman". But That's not the half of it.

A FEW WEEKS ago The Independent ran an interview with Julienne Davis, the little-known actress who plays the part of Mandy, the druggie prostitute, in Eyes Wide Shut. Mandy’s role is small but pivotal - when Tom Cruise’s doctor William Harford is “redeemed” by a masked woman at an orgy, thereby risking her life, he believes it’s Mandy, repaying him for his earlier help. A character at the end of the film also suggests that Mandy and this “mysterious” woman are one and the same. The general impression, therefore, is that it’s Julienne’s body we see at the orgy.

So imagine our queasy surprise when we received a press release from a PR company saying the equally obscure Abigail Good was in fact “the mysterious woman” and that it’s she who cries out “Let him go! I’m ready to redeem him”.

Not surprisingly Abigail was feeling overlooked. But the woman in this scene wears a face mask. How on earth could we tell that body didn’t belong to Julienne?

Well, thank goodness for cinephiles - in an ocean of confusion they offer a surfboard of sanity Sight and Sound editor Nick James knew the Mandy we see at the beginning of the film was not the same woman as that at the orgy. How? “because they had different pubic hair”. Mystery solved.

So how did the confusion arise? Thanks to Warners obsession with keeping the film’s plot a secret, Julienne’s comments on her role have all been vague. We quickly get her on the phone - did Abigail take over from Davis? “No” she says, outraged, “it’s all me. Abigail Good was just an extra. And anyway, she’s English.” (the mysterious woman has an American accent). “It’s hilarious,” says Julienne, sounding not at all amused, “It happens a lot, people try to take credit for things they haven’t done”.

Back to Abigail. “Ooh” she says, with an excited shiver, “I’m the skeleton in her closet”. According to Abigail, Julienne (who has talked in interviews about her wonderful relationship with Kubrick) was “a difficult girl to work with. And she was always late.”

For whatever reason, though both actresses were miked up, it was Abigail who got to play the mysterious woman and speak the lines. Julienne does appear at the orgy, but she’s just one of the many masked women in the background.

But it’s definitely Julienne in the early scenes and in the morgue at the end? “Yeah,” shrugs Abigail, “all that had been shot months before. But I spent a year working on that movie. I was the one at the wrap. My scenes with Tom were the last Stanley ever shot and I got a credit, as the mysterious woman.” (Warners are prepared to confirm this). Stanley’s nephew even signed a photograph of me on the back with the words ‘To the mysterious woman who was later revealed to be the wonderful Abigail”’.

Her version of events paints a weird picture of life on the Kubrick set. And as squabbles go, it’s not entirely dignified. Neither actress could be said to have done well out of the deal. Julienne gets to utter a few words, Abigail a few more but both are there primarily as tits and ass. The secrecy surrounding the plot has possibly worked to Julienne’s advantage, but when Abigail boasts that Kubrick “liked my long legs, he.preferred the way I walked...she’s taking the glory for my body” it’s hard not to wince.

And then we get another call from Abigail. She’s been talking to Leon Vitali, Kubrick’s assistant, and he’s not happy about our little chat. “They’re all concerned it’s bad publicity” says Abigail, “and I really don’t want to offend anybody I don’t want to be seen to be using Stanley, or trying to make him look bad.” She’s really panicked. “I’d rather get no publicity at all.”

But does it make Kubrick look bad? Abigail admits she’s astonished Kubrick thought he could “get away” with the deception. The two women’s bodies really are quite different. Easy to take this as an insult, to the actresses as much as the audience. Did he think one pair of breasts pretty much the same as the next?

Maybe not. There’s a strange circularity at work here. Several years ago, while Kubrick was holed up in Gerrard’s Cross, an opportunistic lookalike (who actually looked nothing like him) cruised the bars and cafes of Soho pretending to be him. In his final film this bizarre phenomenon is played out on screen - two characters posing as one.

So, could be there’s another way of looking at all this. The really shocking thing about Eyes Wide Shut is that it’s so devoid of mystery, so devoid of dark, hidden pockets. The use of a different woman to play “the mystery woman” squeezes a little chaos back into the mix. It turns the film on it’s head, a fallen woman’s noble act transformed into a gesture without consequence - a piece of dreamy theatre far more in tune with Arthur Schnitzler’s wonderfully dazed and confusing novel. In splitting Mandy and the mysterious woman in two, maybe Kubrick wasn’t letting himself get sloppy wasn’t trying to get away with anything. Maybe he just wanted to check we were keeping our eyes wide open, so we could enjoy a final, profound in-joke.

So, in two days (7/16) it will be he 6th anniversary of EWS premier in the U.S., seems too long ago, I remember exactly the day I saw it, it was on the 17th since I had to travel to the states to see it, but I think I already told that story, anyway I was checking EWS related stuff when I bumped with an old post of mine at alt.movies.kubrick, it's the interview that Larry King did to Tom prior to its release.

I'm sure plenty of ppl read it back then, thus far I'm half way, there are parts that I was laughing then dreamy sighing*, such as when Cruise tells how was his first contact with the man and when Kubrick went to the place Tom and Nicole got to live in during the shooting.

It's a good read I think, although as most interviews sometimes a cool story is been told and the interviewer interrupts with some inane comment and so the story isn't finished.

I love this movie. Watched it again last night, heard it calling me. The first few times, it washed over me and kind of just seeped into my subconscious. I saw it, and loved it, but didn't get all the subtleties until now, even though I was aware of them. The most obvious is the headline of the paper Bill buys as he sits down to have a cappucino: "LUCKY TO BE ALIVE." Last night everything clicked again.

Love the whole party set-up even though it smacks a bit of cliche' three-act claptrap. But since it's done so well, it's forgivable. The Hungarian is so smooth, larger than life, as were the models. Nice juxtaposition. Love the bedroom conversation, so believable, so realistic, so true, and close to home. For a buddy of mine, all this hit him so hard when he first saw it in a theatre back in '99 that he had to walk out -- he was going through a divorce at the time, wife was a slut, 'nuff said. Anyway, set up after set up in this odyssey worked perfectly. What I love about this film is how Bill descends slowly and surely into this world he has no clue about.

The atmosphere is key here. I'm rather uninformed about the depths this movie plunges into, as far as the druidic (don't know if that's the right word)/masonic stuff goes, though I have looked at visual-memory.co.uk in the past. Been a while though. My friend, ironically enough, knows a lot about that kind of thing, so I'll have to get him to watch it again, give me his two cents, especially as far as the imagery at the orgy goes.

So many subtleties. I love how even though the movie is 2.5 hours long, everything is essential. Bill going to see a patient who's died, him with the hookers, the costume house, the party as the setup, and the meeting with Victor later on. I just love that final confrontation. Then Bill crying his eyes out to Alice, "I'll tell you everything." Gotta wonder what makes a guy like him so insecure that just a fantasy set him off. Gotta wonder why Alice egged him on like she did, but who knows why women do anything, anyway? But the scene in the toy store is the perfect ending to a perfect film. I'm again convinced that 20 years from now will people finally give Eyes Wide Shut the credit it's due.

The dream for any cineast is to find a good woman who loves a film like this. Who will sit down, watch it, cuddle under a blanket, take the film for what it's worth, and still be able to analyze it for its deeper meanings, and then do just what Alice says as Jazz Suite, Waltz #2 plays over the credits. Oh yes. I say this because of mutinyco's comment in his EWS essay. While the film is a bit cynical (understatement), I find it to be somewhat life-affirming as well. Only after Bill has come out from his journey does he see the value in what he has. He's been awakened.

While the film is a bit cynical (understatement), I find it to be somewhat life-affirming as well.

It's absolutely life affirming.

You should read the BFI Modern Classics book on the film. I have some problems with its interpretation of certain things, but its analysis of it, scene by scene, line by line, subtlety by subtlety is pretty invaluable.

A lot of times, great but flawed films get better and better in my mind until, in my head, they're flawless. Then I see them again and see their problems. This is a movie that gets better and better the more I think about it, and then every time I see it, it gets even better than that.

I was thinking earlier this evening about what I need in a girl; a mutual appreciation of Eyes Wide Shut is not exactly the best answer, but I like the sound of it and I think I'll use it if anyone ever asks me that question.

damn, ono that was a great read...funny, though i watched this recently too. not knowing that it was near the anniversary of the film...but after watching it and thinking back at all kubricks films that i hav eseen...i think this is my favorite and best one...i really can't go into more detauil because i am not smart enough nor do i have an extensive vocabulary to elaborate exquisitly about 'why i love this film'...but suffice to say, the same vibe/feeling i get from mulholland dr., i get from eyes wide shut ....[just an awesome film that reveals upon each viewing]....and i got to mention that the production design and lighting is the best in any film i have ever seen....beautiful........

thats gorgeous..and th ewhole film is filled that aural beauty..even in the room of the prostitute...it hurts me to say this but as much as i love lynch ..lynch can't hold a candle to some of the shit kubrick has done...